Category: Blockchain

Bitcoin Core has published an FAQ section regarding the most recent Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), we are talking about the BIP 152 named Compact Block Relay, the upgrade is poised to reduce the bandwidth and the time it takes for a block to propagate through the nodes across Bitcoin’s network.The upgrade contains several techniques to decrease a block’s propagation time across the network. The general idea is to take advantage of the fact that full nodes have similar data in their memory pools, thus, a node can only send a sketch of the block to their peers, which will then recreate it, this will save bandwidth as the full block doesn’t have to be transferred.The block sketch will contain an 80-byte header of the new block, shortened transaction identifiers, and it may also send some other transactions ID which the sending peer predicts the receiving peer doesn’t have yet.Bitcoin’s core team said in the BIP152’s FAQ: The advantage of this approach is that transactions only need to be sent once in the best case —when they are originally broadcast—providing a large reduction in overall bandwidth.Benchmarks of the UpgradeThe upgrade also has a new feature called high bandwidth mode, in which nodes can request the same block to multiple peers in the network to decrease latency, at the expense of a slightly higher bandwidth usage.Benchmarks of this new method exhibited that a typical 1MB full block containing 2,500 transactions can be relayed with only 15KB of data, and 86% of those blocks will propagate immediately without needing a second request for any other missing transactions.Bitcoin Core team said that this new Bitcoin Improvement Proposal will benefit the network as a whole: Decreasing block propagation times on the p2p network creates a healthier network with a better baseline relay security margin.BIP152 has already a working implementation, and its currently being tested by the developer community. Future plans to improve BIP152 may include the replacement of TCP protocol with UDP transmission, and using an error correction mechanism to handle dropped packets. All in all, these improvements are always welcomed, as they will help Bitcoin to be more robust.

Chain, a Silicon Valley startup focused on blockchain protocol technology, has announced the release of Open Standards One (OS 1), an open source blockchain protocol.

It has been developed over the past 18 months in collaboration with a number of financial institutions including Visa, Nasdaq, Citi, Fidelity, and Capital One.

The VC backed startup, which raised $45 million, aims to transform already existing assets, such as loans or dollars, into non-double-spendable and easily transferable blockchain records, digitizing assets and turning them into digital bearer instruments.

The technology was showcased in secret last month at Chain Partner Summit held at Nasdaq’s Times Square offices where 100 executives witnessed the transformation of dollars into digital cash. It has now been released to the public as open source to ensure interoperability.

Collaboration with global financial institutions

OS1 has been built in close collaboration with global financial institutions with the release being the culmination of many months of “iteration and problem solving” according to Jim McCarthy, executive vice president, Innovation & Strategic Partnerships at Visa. “Many of [the financial institutions] are very far down the pathway of bringing this to market,” says Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain who further expanded at Consensus 2016 to state:

“It’s a secure blockchain protocol specifically for high scale financial markets. It’s not meant to be for everyone, it’s not meant to solve every problem. It’s meant to solve the problem of powering high scale financial markets and moving assets digitally over them.”

OS1 uses a Simplified Byzantine Fault Tolerance (SBFT) consensus system among identified and permissioned validators (nodes) with a capacity for tens of thousands of transactions per second.

Zero-knowledge proofs

It ensures privacy by the use of zero-knowledge proofs that conceal amounts transacted from everyone else but the transacting parties while allowing the entire network to validate the integrity of transactions.

Ownership is established through encrypted metadata with the assets programmable through smart contracts operating in a virtual machine which supports contract enforcement and Turing complete programs.

It is already being used by leading financial institutions with Debby Hopkins, Chief Innovation Officer of Citi and CEO of Citi Ventures stating that “Chain is enabling Citi to explore blockchain applications for our customers in currencies, payments and beyond.”

Brad Peterson, Executive Vice President and CIO at Nasdaq states that Nasdaq has participated in the development of OS1 “through a variety of use cases, including private market securities, proxy voting and clearing.”

Hu Liang, Senior Managing Director, Emerging Technologies Center at State Street states that “Chain’s protocol supports some of the most complex use cases we have in mind.”

Product Description

The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy has arrived, and it’s not self-driving cars, solar energy, or artificial intelligence. It’s called the blockchain.

The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second genera­tion—powered by blockchain technology—is bringing us the Internet of value: a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better.

Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simul­taneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, the underlying framework has the potential to go far beyond these and record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims and even votes.

Why should you care? Maybe you’re a music lover who wants artists to make a living off their art. Or a consumer who wants to know where that hamburger meat really came from. Perhaps you’re an immigrant who’s sick of paying big fees to send money home to loved ones. Or an entrepreneur looking for a new platform to build a business.

And those examples are barely the tip of the ice­berg. This technology is public, encrypted, and readily available for anyone to use. It’s already seeing wide­spread adoption in a number of areas. For example, forty-two (and counting) of the world’s biggest finan­cial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Credit Suisse, have formed a consortium to investigate the blockchain for speedier and more secure transactions.

As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, the blockchain will create winners and losers. And while opportunities abound, the risks of disruption and dislocation must not be ignored.

Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son, blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and utterly foundational book about the future of the modern economy. Blockchain Revolution is the business leaders’ playbook for the next decade and beyond.